Rosskopf Clocks Fourth-Fastest Time on Day Three in Utah

Joey Rosskopf clocked the fourth-fastest time on the 9km time trial. (c) TDWSport.com

The Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah stage 3 time trial set the stage for Joey Rosskopf’s debut as American National Time Trial champion with Rosskopf stopping the clock with the fourth-fastest time.

The short but steep 9km time trial climbed 1,725 vertical feet with an average gradient of 5.5 percent, setting the stage for a tough race against the clock.

Manuel Senni momentarily held the hot seat position before Rosskopf clocked the provisional fastest time of 19:07.

Only three riders were able to better Rosskopf’s time with the winning time of 18:29 coming from Rob Britton (Rally Cycling) which was enough to put Britton into the leader’s yellow jersey.

Sitting in second place on the General Classification before stage 3, Brent Bookwalter was the penultimate rider to roll down the ramp.

After losing time in the first half of the time trial, Bookwalter limited his losses in the second half to finish in 11th place, 46 seconds behind Britton.

Bookwalter now sits in sixth place on the General Classification, 44 seconds behind Britton, with four stages remaining.

Quotes from the Finish Line

Joey Rosskopf:

“It felt better than I expected. It was always going to be hard to pace with the high altitude. The whole thing started at 2200m and went up from there which is an unusual effort to have to pace. I’m kind of bummed to miss the podium by a quarter of a second. I went out conservatively as the second half was harder I think and there was more time to be made or lost there than in the beginning. It was a little bit more of a stair step climb in the first few kilometers and after the time check it was the most sustained steep part. I wanted to wait for that to make sure I could get over it with a decent pace.”

“It was really cool to wear the US National Time Trial skinsuit for the first time. I had a lot of comments and it was really exciting to wear it. ASSOS did a great job with the design.”

Brent Bookwalter:

“It was probably as I expected out there today. It was basically a 20-minute power test at high altitude. I think to do well today you really had to be well-adapted and have done some real specific threshold work up at altitude. So with that in mind, knowing that’s not what I had done coming in, I just tried to give it my best and tried to ride on my limit the whole time. I couldn’t really do much more than that. There were no corners, no spots to let off, no tactics, just riding steady the whole time. It was kind of like slow motion the whole time. You could see the road ahead of you the whole time and the gradient was definitely deceiving with the road being so wide. It definitely felt like the tires were stuck to the road.”

“I hope to shake things up in the next four days. In some ways it’s a nice position to be in. Generally, our team is always being looked at in a race like this, always forced to control. Now, we don’t have anything to lose or protect so I think we can relish the chance to get back to good old school hard racing and enjoy that and try to shake things up in the process.”